Mum pulls onto the dual carriageway and puts her foot down, heading for the motorway junction, as I prise off my new heels and rub my sweaty feet. Trainers next week, I decide, before registering that there’ll be a next week, that I’ll be coming back. I still don’t have a plan B; nothing has miraculously pinged into my inbox. Must be too full of rejection emails.

When we get home, Mum does her usual Friday-night routine which I’ve never really understood before, but now I get. She has a long shower without any music. She calls it her wind down and I’ve always thought it was a bit melodramatic but now I understand. The house is silent, there’s no TV on, not even the kettle boiling like a rocket ship ready to launch, yet all I can hear is chatter, screaming, singing, laughing and crying. I can hear the wheels of the nurse’s trollies going up and down the echoey hallways. Pens clicking, scratching across charts which clang as they are clipped back on the ends of metal bed frames. Shoes squeaking across the ward. I can smell disinfectant and something else, a sweet smell that is almost sickly, that hospital smell that’s indescribable but you know it when you smell it. It makes me think of fear.

I wait for Mum to get out of the shower, wishing we had more than one. When I get in, I turn the water on full blast and just stand there, letting it pummel down on my head, in my eyes, over my shoulders. I stay in there until the water isn’t hot anymore.

Later, after we’ve finished the reheated chilli, Mum puts the TV on and I sit next to her on the sofa, restless. The leather sticks against my leg, making a slurping noise.

‘There’s a Jane Austen on, want to watch it with me?’ Mum asks. I shake my head. ‘But you loved Pride and Prejudice…’ She looks confused.

‘That was last year, Mum. I’m not into costume dramas anymore.’

‘Come on, give it the ten-minute test? This one’s called Sense and Sensibility.’ She moves up the sofa for me.

‘Ten minutes. But if someone falls in love at first sight I’m out of here,’ I warn.

She offers me a bar of chocolate. I put my feet up on her lap and make a space by my hip for Scout. Mum pretends to frown but she’s even softer than I am on the dog. Within five minutes Scout is lying on top of me and snoring, her velvet spaniel ears drooping over my thigh.

After the film has finished, and Marianne has finally worked out that the Alan Rickman character was THE ONE all along, not instalove Willoughby, I prise myself away from Mum and Scout and go up to my room. I drop down onto my desk chair. I am wide awake, it’s only nine o’clock. I could read a book, sort out my room or do a witch hazel face mask. Instead, before I’ve really thought it through, I open my inbox and scroll through my emails. Another boring one from Spotify and some junk mail. I check my spam folder, I even check my trash can. Nothing.

I close my laptop, not allowing myself to click the Facebook icon or the little blue bird. As a delaying tactic I clean my glasses before unlocking my mobile, lying back on my bed. I press on the envelope and see a shiny new email flashing provocatively at me. I tell myself to ignore it and not be so weak, so needy and well … desperate. Then I open it.

Dear Miss Baldi, thank you for attending the Young RADA audition day in Dublin. Unfortunately you didn’t…

I don’t read any more, I just can’t. I press the delete button down hard and hold it until my finger starts to go purpley blue. I knew there’d be a letter, something official on nice paper, but I hadn’t thought they’d email me too. How many more ways can they tell me?

I keep thinking if I can just forget it then I’ll be able to move on or get past it. I’ve been getting used to forgetting stuff lately, but I don’t seem to have any control over which information my brain chooses to hold on to. And for some reason this particular scene has been deleted and I’m left standing on an empty stage with all the lights out.